Does Vista Matter?

Vista and Office 2007 have missed the biggest opportunity in software todaythe move to Web-based applications.

Nearly a dozen years ago, Microsoft orchestrated the biggest product launch the computer industry has ever known when it shipped Windows 95 and Office 95. The software was long awaited and accompanied by so much hype that you would have thought the arrival of these two products was a world-altering event.

The launch was successful. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 had made Windows a viable operating environment, but it wasn't until Windows 95 that DOS really disappeared and everyone was running a graphical user interface. And Office 95 turned a collection of programs into a real suite. Many capabilities that we take for granted today, such as multitasking, came into their own with these releases.

Yet Windows 95 was almost obsolete when it shipped. It only vaguely addressed the important trend of the erathe emergence of the Internet and the Web. Windows 95 included the first version of Internet Explorer, but it had to go through two or three more versions before it was a competitive browser. And Office 95 didn't even have an e-mail client; Outlook debuted in Office 97.

In many ways, history is repeating itself with Vista and Office 2007. We've anticipated Vista for a long, long time. We did our first cover story on it in September 2004, and we report on the shipping version in this issueover two years later (see page 74). Though long overdue, Vista offers some impressive features. The graphics finally take advantage of the hardware that most PCs have had for quite some time. You get transparent windows and a more visual way to switch among applications. The new Sidebar lets you add all sorts of gadgets, including a clock, a weather update, and news headlines. Vista's built-in search, and applications such as Photo Gallery, are great enhancements, making these features mainstream, even though we've already seen them in third-party applications and the Mac OS.

The most significant upgrade is Vista's security system, which Microsoft says makes the entire OS much more secure, since you have to give it explicit permission to install new applications. And the new IE is designed to be walled off from most of the rest of the OS. Time will tell whether the new system succeeds in thwarting security threats.

Vista also takes Media Center and Tablet PC functions to the mainstream by including them in the Home Premium edition. And it adds support for new hardware, especially through DirectX 10, for better gaming graphics.

Office 2007 feels like an even bigger leap from Office 2003. Replacing the familiar menu system is an impressive Ribbon interface that makes many buried features visible. People are resistant to change, so I wonder how quickly we'll adopt this version. One major enhancement is XML-based file formats, though plenty of people will continue to use the old formats. And my favorite new feature is the completely overhauled graphics engine that produces much-improved PowerPoint and Excel charts.

Yet Vista and Office 2007 have missed the biggest opportunity in software todaythe move to Web-based applications, also called software as a service (SaaS) or Web 2.0. Vista does have all the tools for going online, and the antiphishing features of IE are welcome, as is the integration of RSS feeds into the Vista Sidebar and Outlook 2007. But these are simply new features rather than a new way of working.

For instance, Office should let you save files directly to an online storage service. And IE should offer much better ways of managing and organizing your online credentials and connecting with Web-based bookmark services.

You can currently get such features through third-party applications and add-ons. It's just like the way people ran Netscape Navigator with Windows 95, and how so many PCs today include DVD-burning software, even though that wasn't in XP.

So Vista is likely to turn out just like Windows 95: a great platform on which developers will build and extend applications and create new ways of working. But Vista is obsolete in the same sense that Windows 95 was. Windows 95 went on to become the dominant OS, but it was the applications that went on top of it that reshaped the computing landscape. My guess is that, looking back, we'll say the same about Vista.